Rivas Road II

Passing the trudging oxcart was easy, but that maneuver put me onto a ten metre stretch of gravel in the middle of the road that had the little Yamaha's rear tire sliding out from under me. Backing off the throttle, I let the bike coast to the ten centimeter lip that led up onto the next section of asphalt. Giving the little 125cc engine a quick shot of gas and leaning back as it reached the blacktop to lighten the front wheel and soften the bump, I jammed the throttle closed. A rear wheel climbing up a ledge like that under power can launch itself into the air and catapult the rider over the handlebars. Grab a handful of clutch, blip the throttle to keep revs up, tap the gear lever down into second with the toe of my boot, let the clutch lever go and accelerate. Slipping around two potholes, I couldn't side step the third one and hit the brakes hard to lessen the impact, then needed a burst of speed to get onto the shoulder and out of the way of the oncoming pickup truck that was roaring towards me down the single lane of pavement in a flurry of dust and flying stones.

I have written before about the experience of traveling by taxi to Rivas on the crumbling, potholed road from San Juan. Now that I have a motorcycle, the trip has taken on a whole new dimension. Most of the pitfalls are committed to memory and my riding style has adjusted.

Maintaining a good average speed over this course requires a modified off-road style, standing up on the foot pegs over the unavoidable bumps and patches of sand, then steering with the knees to go around the rest, using body English instead of the handlebars to make quick, side to side moves.

Just to make things a bit more interesting, a project was started last month to resurface the entire twenty kilometre length of the road out to the Pan-American highway. Consensus opinion is that the six-month operation should take about a year and a half to complete.

In the meantime, the road is being torn up by heavy machinery, with sections hundreds of yards long left rutted and gravel strewn. Diversions take traffic around the areas currently under work. These can range from a brief detour into a roadside ditch to several hundred metres through the back yards of local farmers. Dodging errant livestock demands especially sharp eyes and quick reactions.

Safety men are placed at either end of these diversions to send traffic through in only one direction at a time, but they often seem to wave everyone through and sometimes I see them sitting by the roadside calmly watching the vehicles go by, oblivious to the honking horns.